Basketball's Little Big Shot

Dashing down the basketball court, dribbling the ball past the defense, the Boston Celtics' Bob Cousy raced toward the basket. In the midst of a mid-air leap he palmed the ball in his ham-sized right hand, faked a pass, swung the ball behind his back into his left hand, then took his shot toward the basket--all before his feet touched the floor. The ball dropped through without even touching the rim, and the crowd of 13,837 in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden broke into cheers. Most of them had come to watch Cousy perform. And for this kind of impromptu razzle-dazzle performance, Cousy makes a top National Basketball Association salary of $20,000 a year.

As a gate attraction alone, Cousy is worth every penny of that to the Celtics and the N.B.A. Last week the N.B.A. began national telecasting of Saturdayafternoon games over a 51-station hookup (Du Mont), and Cousy & Co. were the stars for the first three performances.

Fast & Loose. Though Cousy (rhymes with woozy) stands a slender 6 ft. 1 in., he is a small man among the outsize players of professional basketball. Cousy makes up for his lack of size with cat-quick reflexes and spur-of-the-moment shots that are almost impossible to defend against. Lean and loose, he goes through muscular gyrations that would awe a contortionist. He is currently among the N.B.A.'s top scorers, the league leader in assists, and an agile defender against men half a foot taller.

Cousy's ability is no accident. A run-of-the-mill player in New York's high-school basketball circuit, Cousy set himself a goal as a 15-year-old: to become an All-America. Practicing overtime and all through the summer, he made the varsity at Long Island's Andrew Jackson High School at 16. It is Cousy's quiet boast that "I've never missed a game since." The brag covers four years of varsity play at Holy Cross, where he won his All-America rating, and three years of play in the faster company of the pros. In all, it amounts to close to 500 consecutive games. Durable Cousy, now 25, figures that a careful training regimen, e.g., no smoking, no drinking, will let him play for another five years.

The Uses of Razzle-Dazzle. Until recently, Cousy's career has been somewhat hindered as well as helped by his spectacular speed and fancy ball-handling. As a high-scoring collegian (15.1 points average), he could carry the day by individual brilliance. As a pro, where the night-after-night competition is much tougher, Cousy's fancy-dan passing sometimes caused costly mistakes. Says Boston Coach Red Auerbach: "I had to get Bob to learn to fool the opposition without fooling his own team." The solution: Auerbach benched Cousy, who hates to miss a minute of play, every time he made a mistake. But Cousy well knows that razzle-dazzle still has its uses in the pro game: "The game needs color ... I'd stuff the ball down my throat if the situation called for it."

Now that Cousy has also become a national television star, basketball fans all over the U.S. are getting a chance to judge his ability. How does he compare with the greats of the past and present? New York Knickerbocker Coach Joe Lapchick, one of the original famed Celtics, states flatly that "there never was and never will be as great a player as Cousy." "To be great," says Cousy, "you have to love what you're doing--and I do." And when he is too old for the pro game a few years from now? Cousy expects to make his living by running a summer camp in New Hampshire--"with plenty of stress on basketball, naturally."

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